


Bitty doesn't know how to use chopsticks

by entirely_too_tall



Series: Chowderweek 2017 [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Chinese Restaurant, Family Dinner, Gen, chopsticks discourse, shenanigans at the dinner table, use of the word "y’all’nd’t’ve"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 21:16:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12307950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entirely_too_tall/pseuds/entirely_too_tall
Summary: Shenanigans ensue in a Chinese restaurant. Involving, what else, pie.





	Bitty doesn't know how to use chopsticks

**Author's Note:**

> "I am big enough to admit that I am often [inspired by myself ](http://ohjustletmewriteinpeace.tumblr.com/post/164753552524/bitty-doesnt-know-how-to-use-chopsticks)."
> 
> Written for Chowderweek day 2 family dinner, but I am late but that doesn't matter because it's my party.
> 
> Check Please and its characters belong to Ngozi, I am only expanding upon it for our collective non-commercial pleasure.

If there was ever a moment Chowder felt that he was born for, this was it. This, right here, in his moment of utmost glory, is what he was put on this earth for. He’s even got the evil laugh to go with it. Everyone’s gotta have an evil laugh, okay? Everyone was staring at him like he’d gone mad with power, which, was not entirely inaccurate.

 

You see, it all started with almost-Christmas. According to Holster, Christmas means Chinese food (gotta love that Holster logic), so almost-Christmas means SMH family dinner at the Chinese restaurant off campus. Bitty, as if anyone expected anything less, whipped up some pie to bring for dessert, and this is important. This is Chekov’s pie, right here. Are you paying attention?

 

So there they were on their merry way, ordering up some fancy family style dishes to share. Walnut shrimp, kung pao beef, sweet and sour pork, stir fry vegetables, crispy tofu, mapo tofu, Lardo ordered a steamed fish, the eating of which is another story for another time, and winter melon soup. It was going to be a swasome dinner. And then Bitty did The Thing, he did That.

 

He asked for a spoon and fork.

 

Gasps, mock horror, chirps all around. 

 

Now, everyone in SMH (at the table, at least) grew up knowing how to use chopsticks simply by exposure. They all grew up in big cities where eating Chinese food was common. Holster: Buffalo, Ransom: Toronto, Nursey: NYC, Dex: Portland. Lardo and Chowder? Do you even need to ask? 

 

But not Bitty. Bitty grew up in lil’ ol’ Madison, GA. Well, moved there from Even Smaller Town, GA. So Bitty did not have the “full experience”, so to speak, to have learnt how to use chopsticks. 

 

“What am I gonna use it for anyway, flipping burgers on the grill?”

 

“Oh, honey,” Chowder replied, with the most on point impersonation of Bitty’s trademark phrase, “you can’t do that, the burger will fall apart. You use them to only to flip steaks!”

 

Half the table went into uproarious laughter, the other half with confused frowns. It seemed like a lesson needed to be conducted.

 

“Wait seriously?” Dex asked, the poor befuddled soul. “You flip steaks with chopsticks?”

 

A lesson needed indeed.

 

“Chill, Pointdexter.” No prizes guessing who said that. “C meant that chopsticks are a versatile tool able to be used in circumstances more than just eating Chinese food, one of which is cooking, and not the particular instance of grilling, through within the particular instance of grilling, only with whole cuts of meat that would hold together and not fall apart under the focal application of force.”

 

Chowder needed to establish Explaining Shit With Chowder and Nursey. Chowder would go into partnership with Nursey. Ones that involved kissing and more with Nursey. Chowder is getting distracted and digressing and going back to the story.

 

Dex harrumphed at Nursey, but Bitty was not taking this sitting down. 

 

“Well I don’t see the need to be all fancy with chopsticks when I can do just fine with my fork and spoon or a spatula.” (He was still sitting down.)

 

“Yeah, but chopsticks are _one_ tool, you need three.” Holster chimed in. 

 

“S'not like you use chopsticks any time other than eating Chinese food anyway.” Bitty shot back at Holster, eyes glaring from the betrayal.

 

“Chowder uses them all the time when cooking.” Ransom pointed out, earning him a glare too, but also a fistbump from Holster, so it balanced out.

 

“Have you never actually seen me cook with my special cooking chopsticks before?” Chowder asked Bitty, to be replied with a shrug, a grunt, and some mumbling that sounded like “unfair interrogation”. 

 

“Wait, those were _special_ _cooking_ chopsticks?” Holster gasped. “I ate using them! I’m sorry Chowder, I didn’t know they weren’t for eating with, I’ll buy you a new pair. Where do I even find them? Amazon, yes, Amazon. I’ll get them shipped.”

 

Chowder let Holster carry on with his minor freakout, only because he did want a new pair of chopsticks. The “special cooking chopsticks” were special in that they were burnt and ugly, and he didn’t like to use them to eat with because he had an Instagram aesthetic to maintain. Holster didn’t need to know any of that.

 

Turning to Bitty, Chowder pressed on with the topic, because it would feel so good to beat Bitty at cooking. Or at least, cooking with chopsticks. This would go into the annals of family history! “Your grandfather, that’s me, beat a master chef at cooking once, using only chopsticks.” Imagine the glory.

 

“I always cook ramen or any noodles or even spaghetti with chopsticks, makes it easier to poke around and pick them up wherever you want, you know?”

 

“A fork works just as fine.” Bitty countered.

 

“The score is currently at 1 each,” Nursey threw in with a shit-eating grin. Bitty absolutely would not stand the continual affront to his, ahem, impotence, anymore. 

 

“Y’all are not getting any pie for dessert, I don’t care that I brought them out, nunner y’all’re having any tonight.” (He was still sitting down.)

 

“Great, Nurse, you just had to get us in trouble.” Dex, Dex, Dex. Chowder would give all the pies up to get Dex and Nursey to just kiss already. As it were, they devolved into their usual argument structure, which will end in Nursey being smug, and Dex being frustrated, in several ways. Why are Chowder’s best friends like this.

 

Anyway, the Chekov’s pies have been mentioned. The plot has thickened. The cream has curdled (they really need to get Holster to throw out his old milk, it’s turning into yoghurt _, ugh_ ).

 

Keeping his attention on Bitty, Chowder brought out his best angle. “Ok, but what about _bacon_. With chopsticks, you can turn bacon over _just like that_. Just like that! No need to get your hands greasy trying with a terrible and ineffective spatula and a finger, I see you using your hands all the time Bitty, don’t deny it!”

 

A chorus of _ooohs_ meant that Chowder had won over the table, as everyone considered the immense increase in quality of life they could gain now that they have learnt this important knowledge. Everyone except, of course, Bitty.

 

“So you can pick some things up. But not everything, you still can’t pick up burgers, or grains, or cut things. You still need knives.”

 

“Plus one to Chowder for bacon, plus one to Bitty for knives.” Nursey had emerged from his flirting with Dex to continue keeping score. Chowder would rather they kept arguing, because Bitty did not deserve that point.

 

Just then, Lardo announced “food’s here” in her authoritative Manager Voice, and brought everyone to clear space for the dishes brought by the server. It would have seemed that order was restored to the nation, until, right before they started to pick at the food, while the bowl of rice was still being passed around, Lardo did The Thing. She did That.

 

She picked up her chopsticks, reached out as if to pick up a piece of the sweet and sour pork, but left her chopsticks in hovering, looked over to Bitty, and said only two words. “Chopsticks cut.” And then, without taking her eyes off Bitty, she squeezed her chopsticks together, slicing the pork in twain. It was clean, decisive, fatal. Hello 911, I need to report a murder.

 

Instantly, chaos. Bitty, slackjawed. Ransom and Holster, yelling. Nursey, taking Bitty’s point away. Dex, in physical agony. Chowder, vindicated. Lardo, smirking, picked up the pork and ate it.

 

But the moment of glory had not yet come, no. Remember the evil laughing? The Chekov’s pie? This was Lardo taking the first shot, but the winning goal is still waiting to fly.

 

“You gotta admit, Bitty, chopsticks are better. The score clearly shows.” Nursey, always to Chowder’s defence. The best D-man one could wish for.

 

“It still doesn’t cut everything. It won’t cut steak.” Bitty, clinging onto his slipping position by a 4-pronged fork desperately gripped in his hand.

 

“No, but it can cut the most important thing: pie.” Chowder, putting his masterplan into action.

 

“Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Make a bet!” Holster, living for this kind of drama, performing to the plan. “Chowder can prove that he can cut and eat a pie with chopsticks right now! If he wins, we all get pie for dessert. If he loses, Bitty is right, chopsticks are lame, and we don’t eat pie.”

 

“Fine, we’re doing this, clear the plates!” Bitty, too stubborn to know when to back down from a losing battle.

 

“I’m so totally gonna win this bet, and you’ll see the error of your ways!” Chowder, composing limericks for his grandchildren to commemorate his coming victory.

 

Thus, the pie was brought out, and placed in front of Chowder, the rest of the table staring in anticipation. Except Lardo, she continued eating. She can multitask.

 

Step 1, pick up chopsticks, slowly, deliberately. Flourish them about before taking them out of the sleeve. Pull them apart with extra dramatic tension. Hover before the impact. Request a drum roll. 

 

Step 2, make the cut. Honestly, cutting into pie is the easy part. Just, you know, stab em in and saw down like a knife, it’s not that different. But for theatrics’ sake, make it slow. Like this is live slomo cam, with the music and zooms and lighting. 

 

Step 3, pick it up. Now comes the part where Chowder has to thank Bitty for baking the most perfect apple pie. It sticks together, it holds itself, it does not crumble, it does not leak. It is a blessing and a curse. 

 

(“I have never been more disappointed that I made a pie so good in my life.”)

 

Sliding a chopstick underneath and another on top, Chowder made the lift, and it was good. He placed the slice on his place, cut off a piece at the tip, and lifted it high.

 

“With the grace of Bitty, I now consume, the pie with chopsticks. May we all live in the knowledge, that chopsticks are The Best.”

 

Chowder put the piece of pie in his mouth. Chowder chewed and swallowed the pie. Chowder declared “I have won.” Chowder cackled his evil laugh. Chowder had won, and had demonstrated his power. This was his moment of glory. 

 

“Yo that was some mad cackalackin,” Ransom commented as he was the first to recover from the display of superiority. 

 

“I’m pretty sure that’s not what that means,” Dex said. So many lessons to teach that man.

 

“It’s a pun, Dexy.” Nursey explained. Again, Chowder would enter a partnership.

 

“Don’t worry Bitty, we won’t make you use chopsticks,” Chowder said. “We want you to know that you are loved, even if your utensil skills are inferior.” 

 

“Kids these days have no respect. Back in my day, y’all’dn’t’ve dared talk back like that. I feed y’all and this is the treatment I get.” Bitty mumble-grumbled, unhappy in his defeat. 

 

They eventually finished their meal together in joviality, but not before more incidents with eating pie with chopsticks, eating tofu with chopsticks, eating soup with chopsticks, and Nursey spilling said soup all over Dex and they had to leave early together. All in all, it was a good family dinner.

 

Right before they left for winter break, an Amazon Prime shipment came in with a brand new pair of “special cooking” chopsticks for both Chowder and Bitty each. Apparently they’re actually a thing, who knew?

**Author's Note:**

> I just needed an excuse to have Bitty say the frankly incredible word "y’all’dn’t’ve".
> 
> Thank you for reading. Come yell at me on [tumblr](http://ohjustletmewriteinpeace.tumblr.com).


End file.
